Carrier-Multiplication-Induced Structural Change during Ultrafast Carrier Relaxation and Nonthermal Phase Transition in Semiconductors

While being extensively studied as an important physical process to alter exciton population in nanostructures at the fs time scale, carrier multiplication has not been considered seriously as a major mechanism for phase transition. Real-time time-dependent density functional theory study of Ge2Sb2Te5 reveals that carrier multiplication can induce an ultrafast phase transition in the solid state despite that the lattice remains cold. The results also unify the experimental findings in other semiconductors for which the explanation remains to be the 30-year old phenomenological plasma annealing model.